Water In My Lungs

Stranger Comes Calling

In the far room, sunlight danced with the dust particles in the air as her long, blonde eyelashes fluttered open. She waited for her vision to clear and her mind to grasp onto whole thoughts before pushing the covers away from her face. Connor stretched, arching her back, extending her arms above her head and relaxing. She considered laying in bed a while more, enjoying the stillness of the quiet morning, but her thirst won her over.

As she began to push herself up, her eyes caught the rectangle cut out of the attic door, just against the ceiling. Looking closer, the edges were shadowed and the door tilted slightly. What the hell? Connor stood and paused under the opening with her hands on her waist, staring up at it quizzically.

She looked around for the stool and picked it up, setting it under the attic and climbing up. She snuck her fingers under the edge and pulled, popping open immediately. Connor gave a bewildered glare, knowing full well the door felt as if the other side were held shut the previous night.

The blonde poked her head up into the hatch and looked around across the empty floor. In the corner under the triangular window, she noticed, sat a mattress and a lamp. That's funny, she thought, maybe this was his getaway spot. Mattress is a weird choice, though...

With that, the green-eyed girl climbed down and set the stool in the corner, a strange feeling settling in the back of her skull.

Connor padded across the hardwood floor with her bare feet, relishing in the emptiness of the house and not bothering to find a pair of pants to wear to the kitchen.

An empty water bottle sat on the table from the night before and she instinctively picked it up and shook it. Connor twisted her lips in disappointment and looked towards the sink. Dare I...? she thought sarcastically. She was normally the one to break things to a greater extent than they originally had been. She didn't want to be the only one home to deal with it.

The faucet gleamed against the window as she grasped the handle apprehensively, clenching one eye and leaning away as if to brace herself from the spray she hadn't felt yet. With a jerk of her hand, the handle went up and the water came out, spewing in all directions violently. Connor tried to push the lever back down while protecting her eyes from the stinging streams of water with her other hand.

"Goddamn it!" she screamed, having pushed the hild of the faucet back down with no hint of the water stopping. It kept coming at her as she alternated up and down movements in false hope. Finally, she stepped away, shrieking in frustration as water slid across the floor and soaked the counter tops. Her eyebrows scrunched and her jaw clenched, knowing it would take hours to contain the mess she'd inadvertently made.

She walked across the soaked floor, grimacing as her toes squished against the soggy floor mat in front of the sink. In an almost undetectable turn of her head, she noticed a darkened shape against the green of the yard. She looked again, this time purposefully, and focused on the figure. He was still, looking in through the window with his hands in his pockets. Her hands flopped to her sides exasperatedly as she realized her ensemble, a dripping tank top and underwear to match.

"Great." A familiarity laid heavy in the back of her mind. Connor ignored it, jaw working as she scampered upstairs to change. Her tote had been thrown open the night before to find a sleep shirt. The irate blonde rifled through it, holding up a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee, no. A t-shirt she bought on vacation with her uncle, nope. In frustration she pulled up a pair of olive jeans she'd recently purchased, cute, and a salmon colored shirt with lace covering the shoulders,

"Yes sir!" She said triumphantly, hefting the wet clothes from her body. As she pulled the shirt over her face, temporarily blinding her, she thought of the marketplace.